Did “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Start the Civil War?

That’s the question asked in today’s NY Daily News by David Reynolds, distinguished professor at CUNY and author of the upcoming “Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America” and the editor of “Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Splendid Edition.”

From Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

This year marks both the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which created such a stir when it was published in 1852 that Abraham Lincoln reportedly called Stowe “the little lady who made this great war.”

But how can a single novel cause a war? Historians have evaded the issue, focusing on the political events behind the Civil War rather than on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” But culture often shapes politics: Witness the revolutionary impact of Gandhi, Rosa Parks and the Twitter dissidents of the Middle East, all of whom upended their respective societies by working from the margins.

The Civil War, too, was largely the result of cultural shifts, many of them connected with Stowe’s historic novel.

For the first time, Northerners felt the horrors of slavery. Anti-slavery reformers, once disunited, jumped aboard the “Uncle Tom” juggernaut. So did politicians, which also ignited controversy in Congress, hailed by slavery’s opponents and blasted by its supporters.

In the South, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was answered by countless novels, speeches and tracts that presented slavery as a divine institution that introduced barbaric Africans to the blessings of white civilization.

By the late 1850s, Stowe’s novel had inflamed the debate so much that the North was prepared to elect the Illinois Railsplitter, who hated slavery, while Southerners were ready to die for an institution they now regarded as God-ordained.

Reynolds also has a piece in today’s Hartford Courant, tracing the impact of Connecticut on the roots of the Civil War, through its native daughter and son, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Brown.

Stowe’s contribution to the conflict was her massively popular antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” When it was published in 1852, the novel broke sales records and became an international sensation. Its impact was amplified by plays and tie-in products.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” caused a sea change in public opinion with its searing portrait of the suffering of enslaved blacks. Millions of readers who had previously been indifferent about slavery were deeply moved by the novel’s two plots: the tragic story of the gentle, pious Uncle Tom, who is sold away from his family and taken to the Deep South, where he is whipped to death; and the thrilling escape to Canada of the fugitive slaves Eliza and George Harris.

As Reynolds points out, “Its impact was amplified by plays and tie-in products.” Though book sales were massive, by today’s standards let alone those of the mid-1800s, over time far more people saw the play versions than ever read the book. This truth lies at the heart of our DVD, which presents the George Aiken play version, one of the earliest and most true to the novel.

The impact of this story in all its versions was felt on an international scale. Even England, once a major transit point for the slave trade and an important commercial trading partner of the southern states, was swayed, when the time came, to side with the Union rather than support the Confederacy. So it is appropriate that we go for our last quote to London’s The Independent, and an article entitled “Incendiary Devices: Books as Bombs.” “Every so often, a book comes along that challenges our beliefs and shakes our world view. So what does it take for literature to make history?” it asks. With respect to Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” it answers that:

. . . novels have moved mountains before: none more spectacularly than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which after 1852 became a battering-ram for the anti-slavery cause in America’s Civil War. The remark attributed to Abraham Lincoln on meeting Stowe in 1862 – “So this is the little lady who started this great war” – is most likely apocryphal. Yet it captures what contemporaries thought. Lord Palmerston, that hard-headed champion of British interests, did say that “I have not read a novel for thirty years; but I have read that book three times, not only for the story, but for the statesmanship of it.”

As we mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, looking back at this tumultuous period in our nation’s history, we have much we can learn about ourselves, then and now, by studying its origins.

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“Jiji’s Imaginative Film

"... [is] a skillful condensation of Aiken’s play, combines dramatic scenes performed by accomplished actors, still images drawn from contemporary paintings, periodicals, and original illustrations from published editions of the novel, and popular songs and hymns of the mid-nineteenth century. The result is a powerful visual and auditory experience which reveals the ongoing appeal of a story that helped cause the United States Civil War."

Susan Belasco
Professor of EnglishUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln
Editor, Stowe in Her Own Time
Co-editor, Approaches to Teaching Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“Vera Jiji has resurrected a gem

"of American and African American history in her production of George Aiken's Uncle Tom's Cabin. While the historical impact of the work has remained in our memories, so has the tarnish the play experienced in its decline in popularity and changing representations of Black people.

In a short and powerful production Jiji has returned luster and value to the work in a way that allows contemporary audiences to experience the play's original import. A MUST SEE FOR STUDENTS, SCHOLARS AND SERIOUS LOVERS OF HISTORY."